Envision Effect: A Relay Good Idea
by Chosha 117
Summary: Four months after the Arrival Incident Shepard wakes in his room in Vancouver with thoughts of the past as an idea strikes him. The Reapers can be stalled if only for a few months more. Not much no, but in the coming storm a few months can mean a lot between life and death. This hurts you Harbinger. A Testbed AU oneshot, testing the waters before the real thing. R&R enjoy please.


Envision Effect: A Relay Good Idea

**Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect. I assure it would have ended differently if I did.**

This is a small spoiler for my soon to be uploaded story Envision Effect. This One-shot is mainlyto get something up, with a dash of humor added in. Some of what is seen (read?) in this One-shot most likely won't make it in the final cut, but most will. This is to give a wee taste of what is to come.

A Relay Good Idea is set about four months after Shepard is grounded due to the Arrival Mission. A lot is different, for instance it is set two hundred years later than cannon, please give it a chance. All will be explained when the real fic starts updating. For now, we have just a bit of humor and 'scifiness'.

Please Enjoy.

**(***Envision Effect***)**

Speech Key:

"Normal."

'_thought.'_

_**Envision Effect: A Relay Good Idea**_

**]|[**

**Date:**_ April 1, 2400 _(Alliance Standard Calendar)/

**Location:**_ Vancouver_/ _Earth_ / _Sol System_/

**W**ith a gasp Shepard shot up from his bed, the screams of millions still ringing at the outer edges of his awareness. Moving slowly, his breathing ragged but quickly coming under control, he brought his legs over the side of the mattress allowing his feet to settle on the floor as his forehead came to rest upon his hands.

It had been two months since he propelled that asteroid in to the Mass Relay, causing it to explode and annihilate everything in that Star System, including the three-million lives living on the various Batarian Colonies.

At the time it seemed like the only option to hold off the Reaper invasion, if only for a few more months. The Reapers, sentient Star Ships intent on the destruction of all Organic life in the Galaxy, were literally seconds from entering the Bahak System and taking advantage of its Alpha Relay to begin their Genocidal Invasion. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, Shepard ended that idea by ramming a massive asteroid into the System's Mass Relay.

Following that, John Shepard eventually made his way back to Earth where he was put on 'trial' for the act, even though it was really just a way to keep the Batarians from going to war with the Alliance, or so he figured. The Alliance had to know he'd had no choice at the time, right? Shepard was sure Admiral Hackett, one of the Alliance's greatest, knew as much, after all Hackett was the one who sent him to the Bahak System.

Shepard was distracted from his musings by a slight vibration he felt from the room around him accompanied with the muffled electronic rumbling of repulsor coils. He looked up surprised to see that his ceiling had been set to view mode, he must have forgotten to switch it back last night before he fell into a fitful sleep. The source of the noise and rumbling was easily seen through the hundreds of micro-screens affixed to his ceiling used for lighting and various other functions.

A Destiny-class Guided Missile Cruiser was drifting slowly over toward the Alliance Space Docks, a vast near kilometer tall building, floating through the air on electromagnetic repulsors, shaped similarly to an upside down spire with its point towards the ground. It was accompanied by a three-hundred meter Escort Frigate, its' horizontal shape was miniscule compared to the vertical cruiser next to it.

The rumbling slowly faded as the two ships disappeared around the other side of the Alliance headquarters, and John stood to his full six and a half feet with a tension dissolving stretch. With a thought, his neural interface brought his E-mail up within his Neural Augmented Reality Vision. A quick glance showed he had no new messages, which was unsurprising considering he was technically on house arrest, and the Alliance was probably blocking all incoming messages to him.

With an irritable sigh, Shepard walked over to his wall length view-screen and leaned against it as he gazed out at the Vancouver skyline

A pair of Raloi, vaguely humanoid beings roughly eight feet tall with four arms and a very avian like body structure with a head of feathers instead of hair, where just entering their VMW Skycar down on the landing pad below him. The Raloi joined the Alliance back in 2199 after peaceful contact was made between them and Humanity. The two Raloi down below were Alliance Navy, according to their uniforms, and seemed to be a couple if the flirty way they were acting around each other, gentle pushes and laughing, was anything to go by.

Shepard smirked as the male Raloi jerked the Skycar forward just before the girl could enter in the typical teasing gesture. They were pretty far down, but he could just make out her pouting almost Turian like beak mouth and his laughing one. It was repeated once more before the woman held up a single hand and gathered a ball of purple dark energy, to which the male Raloi's eyes widened and immediately halted all teasing.

He smirked as he remembered doing just that to Miranda not four months ago on New Years during the groups little retreat to Illium following the Assault on the Collector Base. The look of absolute indignity caused Shepard laugh adoringly as he leaned against the window for support.

Then it hit him, an idea, a way to stall the Reapers further. He had to get into contact with Hackett immediately! The Admiral would be able to take the proposal to the top and push it through.

John quickly made his way over to the room's only door and gave it a purposeful knock and a moment later an Alliance Marine, dressed in the standard dark blue fatigues, poked his head in with a timid, "Sir? Everything ok-?"

"Yes, yes, everything is fine. Listen, I need you to get a message to Admiral Hackett, I need him to contact me as soon as possible. Tell him it's urgent", Shepard interrupted the door guard.

The Marine, who couldn't have been any older then eighteen, adopted a fearful look as he took in what John had ordered him to do as his mouth opened and closed multiple times as if trying and failing to come up with a comment.

"B-but sir! I have been ordered not to-."

He was interrupted once again, though this time not by Shepard, as a soft feminine hand landed on his shoulder and gave him a slight shake, "calm down Corporal, you relieved. Get on out of here I'll take care of this."

The Corporal stepped out of the way to reveal the speaker as a look of relief overcame his expression at the words 'relieved' as he turned to them, only to immediately salute with ramrod posture as he spotted the small silver bar on her uniform, "Lieutenant Ma'am! I was just uh-."

"At ease Corporal, move on, I've got this."

"Ma'am!"

The Corporal couldn't have gotten away faster.

Shepard laid eyes on his new guard, a smile touching at the corners of his lips as their eyes met, "so, you finally traded in that butter bar for a nice and shiny silver one."

She smirked up at him, being almost a full foot shorter, "sure did Commander, in response to helping you with that Collector Base. Though if that's what it takes to get up a rank around here we're going to have a real bottle neck on our hands pretty soon."

Shepard snorted at her comment before addressing something she'd said, "not Commander, they've stripped me of my rank and position, just regular old Alliance Citizen now."

"Alright Shep, but that's a two way street", she held out her fist between them.

John's own fist came out and bumped her's, "understood Vega", he chuckled at her pout, "Estella."

The smirk returned and she looked confidently up at him, "so what was it you were trying to get that wuss to do before he ran off with his tail between his legs?"

"Ah, right", he began as if just remembering, "I need to get into contact with Admiral Hackett

Her face took on a thoughtful expression as the delicate fingers of her right hand came up to cup her chin while the left supported her arm, her 'thinking pose' as Shepard liked to call it, "I suppose, he sent me a message a while back, trying to find out if I knew anything about your whereabouts back when you were gallivanting around with Cerberus", she smirked playfully up at him as he rolled his eyes, "I can try and reply to that message and see where that gets me. No promises though."

"Well that's better than nothing", Shepard began, "I'm sure your brother would have been proud of you, you know, James would've been proud."

Estella gave him a grateful smile as she closed the door once more.

John sighed as he made his way back over to his bed, "now to wait".

With little else to do, he plopped back onto the bed, intent to watch a movie or something on the window screen. As he sat upon the edge of the mattress Shepard once more gazed out at the skyline and enjoyed Earth's sunset, a beautiful background to the bustling everyday life of Vancouver's kilometer or so skyscrapers and sky traffic.

A swipe in front of his person brought up a small Augmented Reality screen, to which he began typing away at as he brought up his personal movie library, stored in the neural implant right at the nape of his neck. He smirked as Blasto III scrolled into view, which he tapped at and a message popped up to his left asking if he would like to stream the movie to an available screen.

A tap at the yes option and another to select the window screen quickly brought one of his favorite movies up on the vast window before him, which automatically blocked out the view behind it as the flick started.

He nearly jumped as a flashing red message telling him of an incoming call came up on the screen, over top the movie, accompanied with an alert sound from the room around him, which meant whoever it was they were contacting the room's operating system, rather his Neural Interface.

Shepard glanced at the ID and raised an eyebrow once he realized who it was, "accept", Shepard stated the voice command as he stood to better talk to his caller.

A weathered but not very old face appeared on screen with an angry scar running from his right eye to the middle of his upper lip. Though his hair was graying with the signs of age, intelligent and perceptive blue eyes peered out from under a black billed dark blue officer's cap.

John saluted the man displayed on his window screen, "Admiral Hackett, I wasn't expecting you so soon. It's good to see you sir."

The Admiral nodded at him with his piercing blue eyes ever vigilant, "at ease Shepard, I was actually about to contact you myself when First Lieutenant Vega's message reached me. It was just good timing since my ship just so happened to be near one of the Arcturus Quantum Buoys at the time."

One of the eyebrows on John's face elevated a little at the Admiral's words, "contact me, sir?"

Hackett nodded at him, "I got a message from a... colleague of yours, a Miranda Lawson-."

John started at the name but otherwise stood still in the middle of his room, "Miranda?"

"Yes", the Admiral continued his face still set in stone, though a brow lifted just a little at the interruption, "Ms. Lawson contacted me a day or two ago, promising information on multiple Cerberus bases in exchange for something she hasn't made clear just yet. I wanted to know, from you Shepard, is she trust worthy? Do you trust her?"

On the screen John could see the full high definition force of the Admiral's questioning expression and he nodded confidently, "with my life sir. Miranda had her views of Cerberus soured by the end of the Collector mission. She may not be loyal to the Alliance, but she's loyal to me, she is trustworthy Admiral."

Said Admiral seemed to study Shepard for a moment as looked for something in his expression, before he nodded acceptingly, "very well Shepard, I believe you, I'll contact her when we're done here. Now, what was it you wanted to talk to me about, Vega seemed to think it was pretty important."

Shepard mentally berated himself for forgetting such an important question again before nodding confidently at the Admiral, "sir, I believe I have a way to stall the Reapers, and give us a little more time to prepare, if only a few extra months."

He had the Admiral's full attention now. Thanks to the Neural Implants required of all Alliance personnel all the conversations he'd had with the Reapers, the Alpha Relay incident -the full details known only by the highest echelons-, even parts of the Prothean Beacon from Eden Prime were available as proof of the menace. In other words, when Jonathan Shepard spoke of the sentient starships out to annihilate organic life, he was believed, at least by the Interstellar Systems Alliance.

"I'm listening Shepard", the Admiral spoke.

Shepard smirked arrogantly, "lets move the Relay's."

The Admiral's eyes widened.

**]|[**

**(***Envision Effect***)**

**]|[**

**Date:** _ August 23, 2400_ (Circa ASC)/

**Location:**_ Exodus Cluster_/_ Milky Way Galaxy_/

Six yellow 'eyes' stared angrily into space as a mass of hundreds of two kilometer long ships drifted through the vast unforgiving void. It had to be here, 'he' had 'himself' put it here all those hundreds of eons ago. It had to be here.

'His' armada had just laid waste to the first organic species on the list of those capable of creating A.I, or at least 'he' believes 'he' did, as there were far too few of the organics known as Batarians to be all of the species back at the Reaper's egress point into the galaxy. That first Prime Relay at Kite's Nest had been where it was supposed to be, but the paired Relay had been moved to somewhere just outside the Exodus Cluster.

Now Harbinger couldn't find the next group of Relays, the ones that led to the rest of the Galaxy and the next organics on 'his' list, the Human's. The Arcturus paired Relay should be right where 'he' was, it would take 'him' to the Arcturus Stream, and from there 'he' would reach the Human's home world, Earth.

_Shepard_, that had to be the reason why 'he' couldn't find _'his'_ Relay, oh how 'he' hated that Human. When he was found, Harbinger would personally squash his squishy organic body under one of 'his' appendages like the ant he is.

One of the many cephalopod like ships in 'his' vast fleet drifted up beside him, "Harbinger, how did you _lose_ a Relay?"

Harbinger barely even gave the Reaper at 'his' side a sensor glance as 'he' continued to 'gaze' irritably into the darkness of space, searching for 'his' wayward Relay, "this hurts me."

**]|[**

**(***Envision Effect***)**

**]|[**

Okay so I know how unlikely it is that this would actually work, as for one I'm sure the Reapers have some way to keep track of their Relays, but for just a quick test bed to see how you the readers would react to a female Vega (there is one more surprise about her, but we'll leave that for the official release, she and Shep are sort of like brother and sister due to events in the story, hence the whole fist bump thing), and the tech in the Envision Effect Universe.

Also, as a little spoiler, Cerberus doesn't technically exist in this Universe, they're just being used as a place holder for now, notice that there isn't any mention of TIM. I most likely won't use the Relay moving idea, at least not against the Reapys, for the reasons above. Yes James does- did exist, Estella is simply… well that's for later.

This will be a ShepMiri, sorry Shepard and Tali fans, I'm one myself its up there with Shepard and Miranda to me, but the pairing works for this fic due to what Miri and 'Cerberus' are in this fic. Tali won't be left out though so don't feel bad. _Most_ of the three groups of teammates will be in the fic, but I'm hoping to mix things up a little… or a lot… IDK.

I hope Hackett wasn't too far out of character and the others weren't too bland, tips to improve please. Bring on the constructive criticism; help now means better final work when the real thing is published.

Soooo yeah, tell meh whachya think, and thank you for reading.

Estella's comment about a bottleneck was inspired from Commandocucumbers's (awesome author) awesome story The Fourth Option.

The Raloi are an actual species in Mass Effect, but in canon the Asari find them, I'm just… shifting something's around a little.

Also, the Destiny-class Guided Missile Cruiser was inspired by Killzone's Interplanetary Strategic Alliance Cruisers.

Hey, Killzone Shadowfall anyone… PS4, some good stuff yes? You better believe that Railgun the player is using will be acclimated in some form in this fic… so cool.

Happy April Fool's Day my friends.

**Signed: **_**Zane Reyphen**_

**Choshaj117**


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